June 19, 2005 - Edifying Worship & Educational Wanderings
Greetings!
[Happy Father's Day, Dad! :) I love you!]
Today we attended Grace Church and had a "soup and roll" on the veranda after services. It was nice to visit with the people and the soups were great. We had a young adult get together on Friday night so it was fun to see the youth we'd met then again this morning.
This afternoon Jeff took our team to the Apartheid Museum. It was really interesting and helped give us a better understanding of African ways/politics and the general situation here.
Now we have about an hour before evening service. "The kids" are playing cards, Jeff is putting a slide presentation for the service together, and the others of us are relaxing.
It's so hard to believe our time is quickly wrapping up. I must admit I'm not at all ready to return. But I am so very thankful for the time I have been able to be here. I'm sure it will take some time to process all we have seen and heard.
God has been so very gracious to us on this trip. The way our team has pulled together and worked alongside each other has been His doing -- and it is amazing! :) Pastor Brian gave us some great advise when we had the braai at their home. He reminded us of the purpose of our trip. #1 is to glorify God, but #2 is to learn to enjoy serving and working together as a team and as a part of the Body of Christ. As we learn to work in unity and love with each other. This is what we will bless our home church by on our return. We are to use our gifts to serve each other and, as we are equipped and grown in grace, we will then be effective within our communities and the world. This helped me so much when the beginning of our trip was not going as "scheduled" (i.e. - we weren't getting to work on the building). I knew we would be serving each other but had not considered that one of our main purposes for traveling to Africa would be for teaching us how to better love and serve each other.
May we all seek to know God's purpose for us as His Body! Again, thank you so very much for your prayers for us, you all are as much a part of this trip as those of us physically traveling. We appreciate you! Thanks for your e-mails and encouragement to us.
See you all soon.
Also view Jeff's June 19 Pastor's Journal
